The present invention relates generally to knives and, more particularly, to foldable pocket knives which may be camouflaged to appear as a fountain pen or ball point pen or the like. In general, foldable pocket knives include a handle having a blade cavity therein, the blade being pivotally affixed to the handle and received in the cavity which is defined between spaced handle side portions. A spring retainer is usually also affixed in the handle and moves in the general plane in which the blade pivots, to the spring bias and hold the blade in a blade deployed or stored position. A well known disadvantage of knives of this general type is the difficulty in quickly grasping and opening the blade. Usually, the blade is provided with a fingernail receiving groove being the only portion of the blade which is exposed when the blade is in its stored position. The difficulty in opening the blade is the result of the relatively large blade opening spring force which must be overcome merely by insertion of a single fingernail into the blade opening groove.
Other prior art types of knives are designed to open more quickly but are not always legal such, for example, as spring actuated switch blade knives which rely upon a spring to bias the blade to the deployed position upon actuation of a push button or the like.